1. Field
Example embodiments relate to an apparatus and method of lossless compression and restoration.
2. Description of the Related Art
A process of converting image signals into a digital bit stream is generally referred to as coding, and a process of converting the digital bit stream into the image signals is generally referred to as decoding. The decoding may correspond to an inverse process of the coding.
A moving picture coding/decoding device may perform the decoding on the image signals utilizing a prediction coding algorithm using reference images. The prediction coding algorithm may use a large amount of memory bandwidth, and a larger amount of the memory bandwidth may be used as a size of a decoded moving picture increases.
In addition, when the size of the encoded/decoded moving picture is relatively large, a large amount of memory space for storing the reference images may be used. To overcome this problem, an image compression and restoration apparatus may be used. This apparatus may compress and store the reference images in an input/output of the moving picture coding/decoding device. In this instance, an image compression method may include a lossy coding method and a lossless coding method. The lossy coding method may not satisfy a conformance condition due to information about the reference images becoming lost during compression. Also, in the lossless coding method, a size of a compressed image may not be evenly obtained, and thus addressing may become complicated when considering a partial block within the reference image.